Do Over: book summary

Do Over: Rescue Monday, Reinvent Your Work, and Never Get Stuck by Jon Acuff

After exploring the entire content of Jon Acuff’s book – ‘Do Over’ – I have experienced a nourishing state of mind.

I have realized that, in terms of career, the majority of people deal with almost the same frustrations, doubts, fears, uncertainties, vulnerabilities.

What does Do over mean from Jon Acuff ’s point of view? Check some nuggets (visual quotes from books) and the book summary below to at least have a clue about it.

Jon Acuff’s ‘Do Over’ is one of those kind of books that, beyond effectively dealing with professional issues that most of us encounter, challenges ourselves to take a deep look at the way we approach our own life.

Hence, it invites us to declare first a Do Over to our inner self. To our own thoughts. But also to our behavior – as a prerequisite to engaging in re-configuring our careers.

Do Over is written from a multi-perspective approach. This is what makes the book suitable for almost any type of career phase that one might be confronted with throughout the entire professional life.

I hate reading for no purpose. So, I often chase myself in the mirror. There I find myself at the very beginning of developing a fabulous career path and facing all the inherent struggle. My journey of discovering this mesmerizing book was just about the right motivational boost that came just at the right time.

In Do Over you’ll discover the way to liberation and to self-achievement.

‘We save for rainy days when it comes to our bank accounts, but don’t do anything to protect our careers from the storm.’

Starting from the premise that ‘We were taught to work jobs, not build careers’,Jon Acuff introduces the innovative concept of The Career Savings Account, described using the following formula:

The idea of establishing a Career Savings Account may be very useful to any of us. How often have you been consciously aware of the fact that your career is based on the interdependence and simultaneous coordination of these four constituents?

You’ll find in this book plenty of shockingly uncomfortable statements. For instance Jon Acuff’s book forces ourselves to confront ourselves with is the fact that before blindly struggling to invest in enriching our careers, we should first take the necessary amount of time to create enhancement inwards.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, always the inside determines the outside and not vice versa.

Only after we work hard to actually and practically attain this, we can shift our attention to the professional side of our lives. Otherwise, our efforts will be wasted.

What if we were able to consciously admit the presence of the fear in our own lives? What if instead of trying to fight it, we accept it as a matter of fact? What if we overcome this fear and make the most out of it?

As crazy as it may seem, it is possible to take advantage of our own fear.

Metaphorically stating that ‘Fear is not a dragon to be slain once, it’s an ocean to be swum daily’, throughout his book, the author brings evidence of the mechanism of fear. And also of the fact that fear lays at the heart of each and every action that we decide not to pursue in our life.

We constantly develop a defensive barrier to protect ourselves from the unknown and remain stuck in the known with the use of our limitless weapons, expectations.

This toxic subconscious mechanism that we are so fond of, also applies in terms of career issues. It represents the main cause of our bad attitude towards work and our general dissatisfaction with respect to our jobs.

When engaging in a professional opportunity, we have to clearly recall one thing that the author of the ‘Do Over’ book suggestively puts into words: